Basketball is both a mental and physical sport, when it comes to going on the court it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Basketball players can slowly defeat their opponents in both their play and what they say. Trash talking has been around for ages and now with social media it has become more widespread.  

Palmer Varsity basketball player Manny Gonzalez, an aspiring college athlete, claims that “trash talk does occur in high school basketball very often, and most of the time it is because you think someone is worse than you, and they start talking trash.” Many athletes only talk trash because it messes with their opponents’ mental thoughts to throw them off their game. For some players, trash talk can seem to make them shut down and mess with their mental aspects of the game because it is so psychological. Leah Martinez states that “[for] some players it can affect them and their confidence and how they feel continuing the game. A lot of players use it to psyche someone out.”  

Many studies prove that it can typically cause an athlete to underperform. For Gonzalez, this just isn’t the case. When asked if trash talk takes away from his love of the game, Gonzalez answered simply with “no, it actually makes it even stronger.” Leah Martinez states that “trash talking does not take away my love for the game but elevates it and makes it more fun and competitive.”  

Although trash talk has always been a big part of basketball, it has grown even stronger over time.  This is Gonalez’s main goal; to get into his opponent’s heads and make them question their abilities so that they cannot perform their best. Gonzalez states that “yeah, it could throw you off of your game if you let it affect the way you think.” All athletes seem to have their own personal preferences, whether it is which type of shoes to wear all the way up to wanting to talk trash on the court. Many athletes even talk trash to add that competitive nature to the game.  

Now we know that trash talking is a big part of basketball, when does the barrier get crossed? At what point has the opponent pushed the limit with this form of communication? Both Manny and Leah agree that it has gone too far once the opponents bring personal stuff into play that is not related to the game. Leah says, “keeping it just in the game of basketball is important, there are times where things that have been said taking it way too far.”  It’s a known fact that basketball players are somewhat hotheads, and they can take it as far as getting down and throwing punches. 

In the end it’s really a personal preference. To all the buckets out there, do you trash talk and play or do you just hoop? “It’s fun, it’s basketball, it’s entertainment”